We live in a world where the term snap judgment is often associated with poor decisions. But Malcolm Gladwell, whose springy curls lurch when he talks with his hands, proposes the contrary.

“When people make mistakes, we often say ‘You didn’t do your homework,’” said Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and author of two bestselling books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. “But instantaneous judgment plays an enormous role in how we operate as human beings.”

In delivering the University of Miami Fall Convocation lecture, Gladwell recapped many examples from Blink to demonstrate the power of first impressions in good decision-making. It’s a technique referred to in the book as “thin-slicing.” His first example is an ancient Greek statue called a kouros that the J. Paul Getty Museum purchased in 1985 for $10 million after conducting a rigorous 14-month investigation with scientists and lawyers on its authenticity. A group of art historians and Greek sculpture specialists who saw the kouros after the purchase determined in the blink of an eye that it was a fake. They didn’t know how they knew; they just knew. And they were right.

“The ability to exercise judgment in the moment is squarely at the center of what it means to be good at what you do,” Gladwell said to students and members of the University community at the BankUnited Center.

Gladwell acknowledged that “the Getty way” evolved as an important part of good decision-making. But he also asserted that perhaps people have swayed too far from quick judgment, the type of thinking based on accumulated experiences and often employed in fight-or-flight scenarios.